An interesting book, Beyond Feelings: A Guide to Critical
Thinking, by Vincent Ryan Ruggiero reinforces the thought that both
feelings (right brain) and critical thinking (left brain) are essential
in what we do. It's a quick read, but thought-expanding. One thought evoked
by the book is that critical thinking reduces mistakes, thus reducing assaults
on your self esteem, thus reducing the need for defense mechanisms and
rationalizations, thus improving critical thinking. It's a self-developing,
self- perpetuating process which helps you to fine-tune the presentation
of your feelings in words.

Guy Chapman, in the introduction to a book by Jean Rounault, My Friend
Vassie, made a thought-provoking comment. He said, "...in rewriting
from memory, one recalls the time and the circumstances, the attitudes,
the emphasis and the sense, but only occasionally the words." What he has
described as memorable are right brain functions. The left brain functions,
the language (words) are not held with such precision. He wrote this in
1952 before the significant research on right/left brain function. His
observations were based upon basic human behavior. We do remember (retain)
the right brain impressions. We do, eventually, lose the left brain data.

What we must be able to do is put language to the right brain impressions,
conveying them into the left brain system so we can communicate them effectively.
That's what we, as writers, do in both fiction and nonfiction. In fiction,
we can each take the same impressions or images from the right brain and
write different stories. In nonfiction, the facts we are dealing with and
the editor in the left brain will keep us closer together.

It's not clear which side of the brain, if either, initiates the matching
of language and image. Logic, a left brain function, says it's the left
brain doing the work, but this can be put into reverse. Do we also put
images to words? When we write, do we sometimes conjure up an image to
match a set of words?

One has to keep working at the craft while instilling creativity. It
takes both sides of the brain to make a complete piece of work. It's not
easy. One doesn't become a writer by just announcing it. We must set our
own standards of excellence and then never lose sight of it. It doesn't
matter what others do. What matters is what we do. It's fine to win a contest.
It's good affirmation. But what's more important is that we keep improving,
that we keep working to make the craft as good as our creativity, and to
propel the creativity beyond the craft. Each improves the other.

It's a long and dedicated process.

One thing is clear. The product is better when the two sides of the
brain work in a collaborative partnership. Long before Robert Ornstein
and others, through surgery, studies, and research, proved the different
functions of the two sides of our brains, Guy Chapman saw them in action,
and left something for us, as writers, to think about.